July 12, 2007
freesoftware, gnome
2 Comments
If anyone wants to run a book on the FreeFA rematch, I figure that the odds on the various teams are (updated after news about Dodji):
- 2/1: Red team (from 6/4)
- 2/1: Black team (from 5/2)
- 4/1: Marine Blue team
- 5/1: White team
The Red team from last year ran the blue team very close, and should probably have won their semi-final – they’ve kept most of their players from last year, and should be a force to reckon with. Zaheer Merali, Glynn Foster and Dodji Seketeli in particular played their socks off, and they’ll be up for it again this year.
Update: Dodji went to get a visa for GUADEC, and was given an appointment at the embassy on the 5th of September – so he won’t be in GUADEC. This sucks in so many ways – and it’s incredibly frustrating to see bureaucracy keep one of our community away from the conference.
The Black team made the final last year, and have some good talent on there (footie mad Bastien Nocera, in spite of being a bad loser ;-), stands out, as does Daniel Glassey, a rock in defense).
The Blue team have lost a few players from last year, including their inspirational defender (no, not me) Alvaro Del Castillo. They still have the extraordinary Fernando San Martin Woerner in goal, and with the likes of Alberto Ruiz, Rodrigo Moya and Juanjo Sanchez Penas, they will play well. They may make the final, but don’t expect them to win this year.
And finally the white team – completely renovated from last year – will be the dark horse, but as the unknown quantity, must figure as the underdog.
So – who’ll put me down for a tenner on the Red team?
July 10, 2007
freesoftware, General, home
15 Comments
I’m looking for a back-up solution which is easy to use. Ideally, I don’t want to have to decide what I need to back up and what I don’t – disk space is not an issue.
My dream app would be a graphical application which has back-up profiles – system configuration, personal data, application settings, media files, and maybe user-installed applications.
Ideally, I would be able to do incremental back-ups (à la rsync) where the weekly back-up will only be saving the new email, files and pr0n, and not the 30GB that was backed up first time round.
Also, a restore facility would be nice. In the past, when I have backed up files and had to restore, I have had issues because the user files were backed up for uid 501, and the corresponding account after installing the system anew was 502 (or something like that). I don’t want to have to think about user rights – I want to, as root, restore the system, and have user accounts, files, configuration all recreated as they were at the last back-up.
Anyone know of an easy one-click solution for Linux for the man who wants back-ups, but doesn’t want to have to think about them?
Update: I should probably mention that the back-ups will be to an external USB disk, and will be on-demand. I don’t want to leave the disk plugged in all the time, and I don’t want to have to think about plugging it in on Thursday evening to have the back-up done on Friday morning. Also, I’ll be backing up 3 different systems – including 2 on one double-boot machine. So ssh + rsync via a cron job is probably not the idel solution (but many thanks for the many people proposing it).
July 5, 2007
General
6 Comments
The interesting thing about the recent Google “Sicko” controversy and the reaction to the controversy is the persistence of the myth that corporations have opinions on anything.
The story, for those who haven’t heard about it, is that someone from Google blogged about a movie they didn’t agree with, and a newspaper picked up the story as “Google didn’t like Sicko”. Since then, Google’s communication staff have been working hard to say “No, Google likes “Sicko”, really”.
Shouldn’t they be saying “Google is a non-physical non-thinking entity, it can’t like or dislike anything”? Isn’t the whole point of corporate blogging to show that a company is not a Borg-like entity where some company position (which the president or VP likes) gets proliferated down the organisation to be adopted by mindless drones?
How about this as a non-denial denial? “Google’s management is very proud that our employees have the ability to express their personal opinions through our corporate blog. The diversity of opinion is something which makes our company stronger and richer. We stand by our employees, and have complete trust in their ability to exercise good judgement in their blogging activities.”
June 29, 2007
General
7 Comments
A while back it seemed to be cool to talk about “firing your customers” if they were bad – that is, if they were not really clear on what they wanted, were asking you to change away from your core competencies to gain their contract, or were being very needy and impatient before (or after) signing a contract.
I’d love to hear about people’s reactions to this. Are there good clients and bad clients?
My own opinions are that if you’re in a position where you want to fire a client, someone hasn’t done their job right. Isn’t before-sales in a large part helping decode what the client wants, and explaining to him how your product/service fits into that picture? Isn’t the whole sales process supposed to be about figuring out if selling your products & services will be mutually beneficial?
June 25, 2007
openwengo
3 Comments
In spite of my best intentions, I won’t be going to Lug Radio Live this year to represent OpenWengo.
The official reason is that it’s only 2 weeks before the birth of our third child, and I can’t justify going away for a day & a half during a weekend that close to the “quick, call a taxi” date.
However the real reason is because I was afraid of all the abuse I would get from the LugRadio crowd – a taster of which I got from Stuart “Aq” Langridge upon hearing that I was cancelling:
Well then you are a useless Irish bastard and we are never going to speak to you again, you pig-holding arse.
Yes, that’s right, I am an arse that can hold a pig.
Thanks to Stuart for putting into my mind the image of two beautiful plump rosy bum-cheeks grabbing a poor defenseless squealing piglet. It’s enough to give you nightmares.
June 25, 2007
gnome, marketing
3 Comments
…Have a “Give a school a foot up” day on Software Freedom Day.
The idea: you go to your local university, and ask permission to have a stand during the day. You print out some posters, wear some team t-shirts, and go along with a few hundred LiveCDs.
During the day, you organise 2 hours of presentations in a lecture hall (one in the morning & one in the afternoon) where you just show off the software. Nothing whizz-bangy, just showing people that there’s an alternative to Windows (“Look! There is a clock & calendar at the top! And I can browse the web while writing a text document in two different fonts!”).
The hard part is getting back in touch with that Comp.Sci. professor that only gave you a C in AI 10 years ago. Go on, pick up the phone!
(post inspired by discussions with Fabrice Alphonso and Frank Alcantara, and the recent posts from BarCamp Chicago by Ken vanDine)
Update: In comments, Andy Price gave some priceless advice (sorry, I couldn’t resist): Computer clubs have access to university facilities,can typically rustle up volunteers and do pre-event advertising for an event, and are usually delighted to have someone do some of the organisation for them. Help out the young ‘uns – they’re the community’s bone marrow.
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